Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week, August 11

Another week, another chance to look around baseball and see something that amazes you. That’s part of what I love about the game: weird and wonderful things are always happening. As always, I noted a few that particularly tickled my fancy, and now I’m going to write a bunch of words about them in the hope that you like them too. Shout out, per usual, to Zach Lowe, who came up with this idea for a column years ago and became my favorite basketball writer as a result. Let’s get going.

1. Cavan Biggio’s Instinctual Brilliance
When the Jays’ trio of legacy-admission prospects were breaking into the majors, I was highest on Cavan Biggio relative to industry consensus. I’ve definitely been wrong in that assessment. Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. turned into stars, but Biggio is more of a luxury backup. He can play a lot of defensive positions, but none of them particularly well, and he’s a league-average hitter. That’s a perfectly serviceable addition to your team, but it’s hardly going to set the league on fire, and he’s been worse than that in 2023.

But my Biggio crush is still around, and you better believe that I’m going to highlight his fun plays. Let’s set the scene: Monday night in Cleveland, a scoreless game in the top of the eighth. Biggio drew a start at second base, and with Daulton Varsho on first, he clubbed a no-doubter to dead center to give the Jays a 2–0 lead. Hey! Biggio heads, unite, he’s back in business.

But the Jays couldn’t keep that momentum going. The Guardians came out swinging in the bottom of the inning. With one out, they hit three straight singles to cut the lead to 2–1. The situation was precarious for Toronto: first and third, one out, and perhaps the ideal batter coming to the plate in Steven Kwan.

Kwan doesn’t strike out. He’s hard to double up. If you want to score a run from third with less than one out, those are the exact skills you need. The Jays were going to need something special to hold onto the lead Biggio had given them. And what do you know, they got something special:

Off the bat, I thought there was little chance of that ball turning into a double play. It wasn’t hit hard enough for a throw to second to get back to first base in time. Kwan was booking it down the line. The old standard — throw to first, then get Bo Naylor in a rundown — wouldn’t work, because it would allow the run to score. You have to record the third out on a force play to stop the run from counting.

Biggio knew all that before the play; years of practice and experience make major leaguers pretty good at those kinds of things. But he probably hadn’t turned a double play quite like this one before. Luckily, the path he took to the ball pointed him in the right direction. Look at poor Naylor, frozen like a deer in headlights thanks to the conflicting demands of avoiding a tag and avoiding a forceout:

Only one play could prevent the tying run from scoring, and Biggio didn’t hesitate. He ran a direct line to first base, adjusted to tag Naylor out, and beat Kwan by half a step to turn a virtuoso double play and preserve the lead. Ninety-nine times out of 100, that play turns out differently; the Guardians almost always get a run in, somehow. But Biggio’s moment of brilliance stymied them. He knew it, too:

2. The Greatest Showman
Baseball is entertainment, and Julio Rodríguez knows it. This item isn’t a lot more complex than that. Tuesday night, Fernando Tatis Jr. laced a ball to deep center. Rodriguez went back. The ball was in that perfect gray area where only a spectacular catch could prevent a home run, but a spectacular catch was at least possible. And then:

Did he catch it? Julio wasn’t saying. He came down and took a few nonchalant steps, the disappointment starting to creep into his gait:

We’ve all seen that reaction before. Oh well, he missed it. Tough play, them’s the breaks. Logan Gilbert, who had surrendered the blast, stalked around the mound looking upset. Tatis broke into a home run trot. But wait! Rodríguez had something to add:

What a delight — at least, if you’re not a Padres fan. That cheeky grin, that sly reveal; the play was impressive enough, but the presence to play up the drama afterwards is spectacular. I want my baseball to be fun, and it’s hard to imagine it being much more fun than that. More sleight of hand, please. More Julio doing pretty much anything, please.

3. Announcers Discussing No-Hitters
As you might have heard, Michael Lorenzen threw a no-hitter on Wednesday night. Since time immemorial, a no-hitter has come with a superstition: don’t talk about it. That’s more of a players in the dugout thing, but announcers are often former players, which means they carry on the tradition all the same. It leads to a lot of amusing moments where one announcer obeys the unwritten rule while the other doesn’t.

The first example: John Kruk, naturally. In the eighth inning, play-by-play man Tom McCarthy noted that this was the deepest Lorenzen had gotten into a start without allowing a hit. Kruk, normally loquacious, went silent for fifteen seconds. After a pause, McCarthy cut back in. “Hey, why are you looking at me like that?” he prodded Kruk.

“You know, I try to help you and educate you, and it just falls on deaf ears,” Kruk finally responded. He didn’t even say what he meant; the meaning was implied. You can’t say anything about the fact that there are no hits. It’s a rule! You could feel Kruk’s indignation in his delivery. He carefully avoided saying anything else, McCarthy let the matter drop, and the rest is history.

I got a giggle out of that, but I wouldn’t be writing about this if it weren’t for another example. Tuesday night, Mets minor leaguer Mark Vasil took a no-hit bid into the ninth inning. Now, I won’t lie to you: I watch a lot of baseball, but I’m not watching the Syracuse Mets on a random Tuesday night in August. But you know who does keep tabs on what’s going on in Syracuse? The big league broadcast.

When Vasil finished the eighth inning, field level reporter Steve Gelbs hopped onto the broadcast to deliver an update. “I’m back for something that people will get very angry with me if it changes,” he noted, and you could tell right away what was coming next. “Through eight innings in Triple-A, Mike Vasil… let’s just say, he has not allowed something.”

Gary Cohen took the bait immediately. “Like a hit?” Gelbs toed the party line, though. “I didn’t say it!” he exclaimed, and refused to discuss it any further. The big league Mets inning ended shortly after that, which cut the discussion off there, but you could tell the whole booth was ready to pile on Cohen, and maybe needle Gelbs a bit in the bargain.

Vasil didn’t complete his no-hitter, and Cohen noted it in the next inning. Gelbs had a retort ready. “Hey, you said the no hits thing, I didn’t,” he cracked. The Mets booth being what it is, they managed to stretch the bit out into a long back-and-forth between Gelbs and Keith Hernandez, but that’s just a regular Tuesday night for them. The no-hitter whispering is less a Mets special and more something woven into the fabric of the game.

I completely understand not mentioning a no-hitter in the dugout. The guy throwing the no-hitter needs to concentrate on pitching, not thinking about history. It’s always funny to me when announcers get in on it, though. Clearly, they aren’t affecting the outcome. Baseball is just a game of superstition, I suppose. This one in particular always gives me a good chuckle.

4. Sneak Attack Fastballs
You hear a lot about ambush hitters. I bet you know exactly what I mean when I say those two words together: a hitter sits on a particular pitch in an advantageous count, and when it comes, they attack. Maybe it’s a first-pitch fastball, or a 3–0 fastball — okay, it’s probably a fastball. But either way, it’s a popular idea, and a fun one: you get some awesome highlights that start with fastballs with hit-me signs on them.

I love watching strikeouts, so my interests also run in the opposite direction. I love when pitchers weaponize that crushable fastball by throwing it in unexpected counts. It’s a visual spectacle; here comes the perfect pitch to hit, and the batter pins the bat to their shoulder and watches it fly by. It’s even better if it’s a strikeout.

Watch Zach Eflin cook:

Phil Bickford can do it, too:

Poor Christopher Morel was giving Mets pitchers target practice:

I could keep going with these all day. Everything in this segment happened in the last week. Here’s a lollipop that Robert Stephenson lobbed past Jake Rogers:

Logan Allen threw a 91-mph fastball past the Home Run Derby champion like it was nothing:

Look, maybe you’re not a baseball weirdo like me. Maybe you want to see colossal home runs and nasty curveballs that scrape the clouds before bouncing in the dirt. There’s just something about seeing a pitch in the most hittable location in baseball and watching professional hitters freeze in their tracks even though they know there are two strikes. I’m not saying this is a good strategy, but it’s one I’m always happy to see.

5. Just Throw Strikes
You’ve heard it. A reliever comes out of the bullpen wild, falling behind the first batter 3–0 and eventually walking him. He gets behind 2–0 on the next guy. “Hey, throw strikes!” Some wise guy in the crowd will inevitably yell it. Obviously! The pitcher isn’t out there trying to miss the strike zone. They just can’t get a feel for their pitches.

It’s surely a miserable for that reliever. You know you’re going to hear it from the crowd. You know your team is thinking it, too. But somehow, you can’t execute. Maybe you slept poorly the night before, or got a foot cramp jogging out to the mound. Whatever it is, your command is gone, and the game shows no mercy.

The Brewers had one of the worst versions of this nightmare I’ve ever seen on Tuesday night. The Rockies loaded the bases against Andrew Chafin with nobody out thanks to a walk and a bunt single. Then, the bad times started:

Two walks in three batters, including four straight balls with the bases loaded? Gross. It was time to go to the bullpen and let Chafin hit the showers. No big deal, happens to everyone once in a while. One run isn’t a disaster with the zombie runner in effect. Even two runs isn’t disqualifying. The reinforcements could hopefully pick Chafin up.

Only, uh, Abner Uribe came in and racked up a pitch timer violation before throwing his first pitch. That’s not exactly how you’d draw it up at home. He followed that up in a way that you probably predicted based on the name of this item:

Oof. Just, oof. It’s cruel to bring a reliever into the game with the bases loaded, and particularly cruel to do it to someone with Uribe’s questionable command. This game was getting out of hand quickly, and there were still three outs to scrounge up. Surely, Uribe could turn things around against Ryan McMahon:

Whoops. Three runs home on 12 pitches is not how you draw it up in the clubhouse. The Milwaukee crowd was shellshocked; a few boos rained down, but mostly there was just stunned silence. Uribe recovered to throw a strike on the very next pitch, to a huge roar from the fans, but it was too late. Milwaukee lost, 7–3. Just throw strikes, indeed.